This question begins at the earliest stages of childhood. In grade school, this question is asked once every school year as the teacher asks the students about their ambitions and career aspirations. Most children usually reply with answers that relate to jobs seen everyday on television or in real life. Most boys want to be either a police officer, a fireman, or a professional athlete while most girls wanted to be a nurse or a model. As the child grows older, this career decision has been revised numerous times as we see more obvious career choices come into consideration such as a rock star, an actor / actress, CEO, and President of the USA. Usually at age thirteen, the child is now encouraged to become more serious about what he wants to do in life. Educational curriculums become more diversified as students can choose elective courses that captivate their interests. At age fifteen, this process continues, but to a much grander scale as the decision of a career and the pathways taken to pursue that career becomes more narrowed based on interest and maturity. It is usually by grades eleven and twelve that most students have decided on what to do with their life. Many take the advanced level elective courses in order to prepare themselves for college and prepare themselves for a career. Even then, a change in career can occur as the final plans of college or other avenues began to take place.

The reality of pursuing a career hits home usually in September after the individual has graduated High School. Usually, the individual has either gone to an insititue of higher learning, entered the military, or entered the workforce. Even at this stage of life, a person can decide to change their career path in the midst of their specialized training and pursue other interests. In fact, even after receiving degrees, certificates, accomplishments in their career study, many people do an about-face and decide on a career change. Some are forced to change their careers due to job obsolecence, career ending mistakes, flooding of the market, etc while others choose a career change to alleviate burnout, because they feel like they have done all they can do in their current career, or just to keep their sanity intact. Others feel a change in their careers because of a higher calling in life to fulfill service to whatever calls them to serve. Others choose a career change because they were always forced to do what they did in life because daddy did it and to emulate daddy is to be like daddy in all areas of life. This is true of people who grew up in a "family business", "ministry", or an environment where the child was named after daddy and failure to be like daddy and partake of daddy's interests and hobbies with a religious fervor meant the measuring stick of the parent as a failed parent and the child as a stubborn and rebellious child in the eyes of the parent.

Why have I brought up the issue of careers? It is very simple. Everybody at some point of life has a career. Whether it's being a CEO, a doctor, a politician, an "at-home" mom, a pastor, a engineer, a factory worker, or whatever your career is, I want to encourage you right now to do your very best and give your upmost in technical skills, dilligence, and duty to your employer for the glory of God. If you are a Christian reading this article who has a full time profession not in ministry, I would like to show you in the remaining part of this article that God can, through you and through your career path, move in your life to reach, bless, and minister to hurting souls around you. It is my desire through this article that I will show you that just because you are not in the "ministry" full time does not make you inferior nor does it mean that you can only do less for God. It just means that you are doing the career and call God wants you to do at this time in life. I want to break the paradigm that exists in many churches today that one can not minister to others unless they are in the ministry. Also, most importantly, I want to show you how the concept of tent making in obedience to God is a way that one can become more and more the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

Please Click here for part two of this article.